Bill and Kathy Hosack had no premonition
on a February morning in 2004 that their entire world would come
crashing down upon them.

Hosack had been coroner of Coos County,
Oregon, until his retirement in 2004, and a pathologist in a local
hospital. He had put four children through college and graduate
school on his salary.

Out of the blue, a day in the country turned
into a nightmare of violence. Hosoack's rural property was invaded
by four angry young men. Hosack's sister (Candace Upchurch), his
nephew (Sam Upchurch), and his friend (Don Wyatt) had inadvertently
splashed the four as they drove up the mountain dirt road.

The four assailants went looking for a fight
and tracked down Upchurch and Wyatt on the edge of Hosack's property.
Josh Andrade, 19, attacked Wyatt, 54, and began beating him --
breaking several bones. Not surprisingly, Andrade has a record
of prior assaults.

Hosack, 63 at the time, came upon the scene
in response to the ruckus, but he was unable to disengage Andrade
orally. Andrade was pummeling Wyatt and trying to drown him. At
this point, Hosack took out his .45 pistol and fired two warning
shots. Andrade was probably on drugs because, rather than backing
off, he charged Hosack.

Rather than shoot the assailant, Hosack
struck him with the butt of the gun (actually, Andrade may have
struck Hosack's gun as he charged), causing a round to discharge
which hit Justus Cloud, 22, who was standing nearby. Cloud has
a record of several prior convictions and was wanted at the time
of the attack for failure to appear in court on a drug charge.

Wyatt commented that had it not been for
Hosack's intervention, he would have been dead. Cloud tested positive
for several drugs, but Andrade, strangely, was never tested -
even though Andrade was in violation of probation on drug charges
at the time of his assault. Andrade was found to be drunk when
his blood was tested. In addition to the beating from Andrade,
Wyatt saw another of the assailants coming at him with a knife.

Wyatt called in a 911 report, fearing that
the four assailants would make good on their threat to return
- not what one would expect of a group where one of their number
had been shot. Anger sustained by drugs may well have been responsible
for the threats.

While this initial threat was over, Wyatt,
unfortunately, did not report that one of the assailants had been
shot.

After over an hour, Hosack, his nerves quite
rattled, drove his wife and mother home to Coos Bay. They passed
a police car on the way down the mountain, but had no way to know
that the cops were interviewing the assailants and forming an
initial impression that the assailants were the victims - an opinion
the authorities never changed.

Hosack, reacting as do many victims of assault,
drank some alcohol after returning home. He was still rattled
when a state trooper came to his door and interviewed him. It
was then that Hosack said that he had been drinking - without
qualifying that he had not been drinking before the attack. (Is
it OK to drink as long as one knows that there will be no attack?)

Hosack's behavior is quite typical of victims
suffering post-traumatic stress. Amazingly, the police wanted
to test Dr. Hosack's blood alcohol, but never tested two of the
four assailants. Since the authorities already "knew" that the
senior citizens were the assailants, they only looked for evidence
to convict the victims.

Anti-self defense Judge Richard Mickelson
heard the case and found Hosack guilty of recklessly shooting
Cloud. Mickelson said that Hosack had had time to "safe" the .45
during the attack. He based that opinion on the assailant's testimony
and on the judge's own assumptions as to where the spent casings
were located.

Hosack had fired two rounds in the air,
then had accidentally discharged a third round after hitting his
attacker on the head. Naturally, the casings were in two different
areas. The judge assumed that some period of time had passed during
which Hosack had moved and would have had time to put the .45
on safety.

One has to wonder at the degree of expertise
Judge Mickelson has with guns since he referred to the .45 as
a semi-automatic revolver. Revolvers, of course, do not discharge
spent casings. Semi-auto pistols eject casings all over the place,
even when the gun is fired at the same target at a range. This
is especially true if two rounds are fired in the air followed
right away by an accidental discharge which has the gun in another
position.

Mickelson then concluded that Hosack had
taken a gun to a fist fight - a fist fight conducted by a group
of young men who may all have been on drugs, but only Cloud had
been tested. Evidently older men should disregard the danger to
themselves and their womenfolk and be sporting enough to duke
it out with assailants a third of their age. For the offense of
inappropriate force -- used irresponsibly (according to the judge's
expert opinion about firearms) -- Hosack was sentenced to 30 days
in jail, three years probation, loss of his right to own a gun,
assessed $20,000 in restitution to Cloud and fined $5,000.

At sentencing the judge opined that Wyatt,
an ex-longshoreman, should be ashamed of himself to have allowed
a smaller man (Andrade) beat him up. Would the judge have had
the same opinion about a taller woman raped by a shorter man?

Happily, Hosack is retired, because he is
likely to lose his medical license which would have cost him his
job. The legal expenses have wiped out his meager savings (remember,
he bore four sets of costly college tuitions). Hosack faces retirement
broke, unable to practice his profession - and a lawsuit from
Cloud who has subsequently been arrested since the assault.

Judge Mickelson's decision was wildly unjust,
and the personal harm to Dr. Hosack has been devastating. All
of this because the Judge had a prejudice against self defense
with a gun, and a willingness to believe assailants who invaded
another's property and who attacked older people with no provocation.
Incredibly, these assailants were untested for drugs even though
there was plenty of reason to do so.

Coos County District Attorney, Paul Burgett,
is just as politically correct. In other cases, he chose not to
prosecute two police officers for shooting a man with one arm
in a sling and another man for brandishing a marking pen. The
D.A. believed the cops' lethal action was justifiable, but Hosack's
non-lethal action was felonious. Double standard anyone?

For those wishing to communicate with Judge
Richard Mickelson and District Attorney Paul Burgett can do so
as follows:

Larry Pratt has been Executive Director of Gun
Owners of America for 27 years. GOA is a national membership organization
of 300,000 Americans dedicated to promoting their second amendment freedom
to keep and bear arms.

GOA lobbies for the pro-gun position in Washington
and is involved in firearm issues in the states. GOA's work includes providing
legal assistance to those involved in lawsuits with the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms, the federal firearms law enforcement agency.

Pratt has appeared on numerous national radio
and TV programs such as NBC's Today Show, CBS' Good Morning America, CNN's
Crossfire and Larry King Live, Fox's Hannity & Colmes, MSNBC's Phil Donahue
show and many others. He has debated Congressmen James Traficant, Jr.
(D-OH), Charles Rangel (D-NY), Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), Senator Frank
Lautenberg (D-NJ), and Vice President Al Gore, among others. His columns
have appeared in newspapers across the country.

He published a book, Armed People Victorious,
in 1990 and was editor of a book, Safeguarding Liberty: The Constitution
& Militias, 1995. His latest book, On the Firing Line: Essays in the Defense
of Liberty was published in 2001.

Pratt has held elective office in the state legislature
of Virginia, serving in the House of Delegates. Pratt directs a number
of other public interest organizations and serves as the Vice-Chairman
of the American Institute for Cancer Research.

Coos County District Attorney, Paul
Burgett, is just as politically correct. In other cases, he chose not
to prosecute two police officers for shooting a man with one arm in a
sling and another man for brandishing a marking pen.